


Less

by The_Resurrection_3D



Category: Yin Yang Yo!
Genre: Angst, Childhood Memories, Gen, Mommy Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 19:58:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16939722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Resurrection_3D/pseuds/The_Resurrection_3D
Summary: He doesn't understand until his fifth birthday.





	Less

**Author's Note:**

> This is _old,_ my dudes. Dec 29, _2013_. Unedited from the original text over on ffnet, though I did change the title from Objectively Less and removed a word from the summary. 
> 
> Listen. Listen. I love Yuck with all my heart, truly I do, but Carl has always been criminally underrated, even back in the glory days. Don't @ me.

Carl knows something's wrong the minute he's home from the hospital. If he cries at the same time Herman wants something, needs something, is just  _around,_  he has to wait and cry and go hungry, or bored, or whatever he was crying about to begin with.

But at that age he doesn't understand that Mommies and Daddies have favorite children, even if they don't admit it. Mommy isn't subtle about it, but at this age he thinks he's simply...slow. Yeah, that's it. Mommy is showing him that he needs to catch up, move faster. So he can be like Herman.

Even if Herman hits him or yells so loudly Carl's eardrums wince or makes Mommy pay less attention to him, he wants to be like Herman.

He doesn't understand until it's his fifth birthday and Mommy doesn't have a cake for him.

Herman had a cake last week, he can remember that. He can't remember if  _he_  ever had a cake before this (he never does afterwards, that's for sure), but this missing one will always stick out in his mind. He is going to ask Mommy if she w+ants to see this really super awesome magic trick he's been working on when Herman cuts him off and asks if he can have Carl's ( _old,_ he says;  _never plays with them anymore_  (a lie), he says) toys sold off to feed his own ever-growing army.

Herman has just turned ten and spends his time down at the playground, leading conquests for the slides, the swings, the beaver dam forts at the pond.

She says yes.

Carl's face is so-often covered with the soot of failed spells Mommy once commented, "It's like your skin secretes it naturally." Rubbing at his visage so fiercely he wondered if it was going to  _come off_ , like in the movies Herman makes him watch so  _he_  can watch Carl squirm.

Carl asks about the trick. She says no.

All his life his brain has been telling him to run faster, catch up  _ _catch up__ , and today he realizes that that will never happen. He's spent days upon nights upon weeks working on a trick Mommy doesn't want to see. And then Herman just  _shows up_  and it's goodbye attention, affection. She doesn't love him (and Carl holds that thought in the back of his mind for so much of his childhood), or maybe she does but certainly not as much as her 'special' ant son.

 _What's so special about Herman?_  Carl thinks. All the answers his brain supplies him with leave such a sour taste on his tongue that he excuses himself from the table.

Carl now understands that unless Herman's achievements are buried in cockroach dust he will never catch up, like the tortoise only winning because the hare had fallen asleep.

Tomorrow and the next day and so forth he'll put the knowledge off as  _she was tired, he didn't practice enough to begin with._  And he'll go back to being Herman's wannabe so Mommy can learn to love him.

But his fifth birthday, his fifth birthday he knew.


End file.
